Tropical cyclone didn't hit Darwin

Hi everybody.

Just a quick update to let you guys know that the cyclone didn't hit Darwin. The night before it presumably would hit the predictions were very dire: Monica would move over Darwin as a category 3 or 4 cylcone. The town spent all day preparing for the worst. The supermarkets were packed with people, the supermarket personel having a hard time restocking the shelves in time with essentials like water, bread and canned food. In the streets people were doing their best to protect their property against the worst. It was a bit of a surreal atmosphere. We went to sleep expecting to run for the storm shelters by 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning.

During the night the cyclone changed direction, on a course south of Darwin. It also lost a lot of it's power overnight, shrinking to a category 1. So when we woke up at seven expecting the worst, there was just a slight drizzle and some wind. By 10 o'clock we did get some stormy weather, but nothing dangerous. We did end up getting sent to the stormshelter by hostelpersonell though, presumably following an anouncement on the local radio. That turned out to be a false alarm though. They misunderstood the anouncement. So we walked through the streets of Darwin in the pouring rain with all our gear to the shelter and back for nothing... and getting very wet. At least we did actually get to see the shelter from the inside :)

There is still a very small chance that the cyclone (which has now been downgraded to a "tropical low") re-intensifies in the next few days and swings back at Darwin, but that's really just a very remote chance. So it looks like we're safe and can continue looking for work :)

Update on Cyclone Monica *UPDATED*

Hi all. We've arrived in Darwin. It looks like a nice town. Today we've been looking for a job, 'cause we're starting to run low on cash again :) It's looking good, looks like there's plenty of work available in the area. If we can find a good job we'll stay here for 4-6 weeks, if not we'll go into Queensland and find a job there.

That cyclone I mentioned before is slowly moving in the direction of Darwin. It's still 600 km's east of us, and at the moment it's moving at 5 km's/hour in western direction, however there is a chance that it moves into our area during the next week. They tell us that these tropical cyclones are very unpredictable and thus there is no way of telling if we will get hit, and if we do it's possible that it won't be more than a storm. Cyclones gain strength over water, and loose strength when they cross land. There is still a lot of land between us and the cyclone, so chances are that when/if it get's here it will be a very "mild" cyclone.

I've got a few links for you guys so you can follow the progress of the cylcone:

Latest sat image : http://www.bom.gov.au/gms/IDE00035.latest.shtml

Sat loop of the last few images : http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDE00902.loop.shtml

Summary of the situation: http://www.bom.gov.au/weather/warnings.shtml , under Northern Territory you'll find a few links with info about the tropical cyclone (TC)

We informed ourselves today about possible shelters etc. There is one just across the road of our backpackers, very convenient :) So if it does come to the worst (UNLIKELY), we already know what to do and where to go. So no worries :)


UPDATE 24-04-2006
The latest prediction is that cyclone Monica is going to hit Darwin full on. However, it is also predicted that it's going to power down from a category 5 to a category 3 (see http://www.bom.gov.au/weather/qld/cyclone/windstr.shtml for explanation on the different cyclone categories). We've been fully briefed by the staff of our hostel and have been told to head for the nearest shelter as soon as it opens. As it stands now that will be around lunchtime tomorrow (early morning Belgian time). It is only a prediction, so the cyclone may still end up changing directions by tomorrow. It is possible that in the next few days I won't be able to keep in touch via internet/phone/sms, but as soon as I can I'll post an update. If the cylone does hit it could take anything from a few hours to a day or more to pass. We've stocked up on 2 days worth of food ourselves, so we're ready to go :) The stormshelter we will be heading for is actually the underground parking of a brand new Holiday Inn hotel. It's been built to withstand cyclones, so we'll be perfectly safe there.

Bye for now.

Red

The colour red has been firmly imprinted in my mind over the last few days. It is the colour of the sand in the central Australian desert, it is the mystical glow of Uluru in the early morning sun, and it is the magical aura of the setting sun over Kata Tjuta. Stunning, overwhelming, awe-inspiring. Need I say more?

I guess I better should :) Apart from a tourguide that sometimes treated us a bit to much as 5-year olds, the tour of the centre was a big succes. Kings Canyon was full of surprises. A barren canyon formation with an oasis of green in the heart of it. Not to hard to figure why it's called the Garden of Eden. It looked completely out of place in it's rocky and dry surroundings. It was also the home of The Lost City, a formation of rocks that looks like a long abandoned city turned to stone. Very mysterious... until you hear the geological explanation of the guide of course... damn the demistification of modern science :)

After spending half a night sleeping in swags under the stars, we got woken up by a shower of rain at 2.30 in the morning. I very reluctantly got up and moved to a dryer spot after waiting for ten minutes for the rain to stop and hoping that the swags were waterproof... which they weren't. This resulted in a very wet swag and a damp sleepingbag. The following nights we were allowed to sleep in basic tents because of the persistent rain. After an early start to the second day, we witnessed our first Uluru sunrise (read Evy's Flemish blog for a funny and mildly embarissing anecdote about this). It was a bit of a dissapointment. Because of the clouds the sun didn't manage to glow up Uluru. Just as we got back into our bus though, the sun came out and we all rushed out again to catch a glimpse of this phenomenon. It only lasted for a minute or so, but it was impressive. It was also the best we'd get to see of it, 'cause on the next morning the sun never managed to get from behind the clouds... pitty.

The rain was persistent over the 3 days of the tour. That would've been a big turn-off if it weren't for a walk in the Olga's ( or Kata Tjuta in Aborigine). Because of the rain we saw dozens of little magnificent waterfalls that grace this special rock formation in wet weather. According to our guide we were very lucky with the weather, 'cause "only 1 percent of people who visit the centre get to see this phenomena". Good weather, it seems, is relative :) But boy was our guide right. The 7.something km walk in the pouring rain turned out to be my favourite moment of the tour.

On the last day we got the choice of climbing Uluru, or doing a walk around the base of it. In the light of my recent experiences the first choice would've been the way to go. I decided not to do it in the end though, 'cause (as we learnt during the tour) Uluru is a very significant spiritual place for Aboriginals. The summit of Uluru used to be a place where important rituals took place. thus, in Aboriginal lore the walk to the summit of Uluru is only allowed to be undertaken by Aborigine who have been deemed worthy spiritually. The European colonists claimed Uluru (or Ayers Rock as they called it, after one of the first governers of South Australia) and the surrounding land as their own, rejecting the Aborigine's right to it. It was only in the 80's that Australian government partly returned the land to it's rightfull owners, but only if the Aboriginal community let it open for visitors in the form of a National Park. Because of this the Aboriginals can't refuse access to the Uluru climb (100's of people do it daily). They can only ask visitors of the national park to respect their wish not to do it... which is what I did. The base walk was nice (and in sunny weather, which was a nice change) and it gave us the opportunity to get up close and personal with the worlds largest monolith.

We've been back in Alice Springs for 2 days now and are leaving for Darwin (22 hours in the bus) this evening. We are aware of a new cyclone (Monica, category 1) that is supposed to hit the north of Australia. According to the last predictions it is heading for the northern tip of Queensland, which is well out of our way. So aside from the possibility of a lot of rain we probably won't be affected much of the cyclone. No worries :)

Yesterday we booked a great deal. We booked for a 3 day sailingtrip of the Whitsunday islands, 3 days in a 4WD on Frasier Island (the worlds larges sand island), and 4 nights accomodation on Queensland's worldfamous beaches. We haven't set a date for the trip yet, as we probably will have to do some work again when we get to Queensland at first. But it's all payed for and we just have to reconfirm when we're ready to go. Great!

Oh yeah, one more tip: Check this site out : http://www.australietrip.web-log.nl/ . It's the blog of a Dutch couple we met on our last tour. It's got a lot of beautiful pictures of that tour (even one of us if you look carefully), and of all the other places they visited. A great blog!

Cheers!

South & Central Australia in a nutshell

Hello guys! Well since my last post we've covered a lot of ground. After leaving Tasmania we headed for Adelaide and hung around there for 2 days. We didn't want to stay there too long, 'cause we figure that once you've seen a few large cities in Australia you've seen 'm all... sort of. We strolled around the parklands, Glenelg beach (didn't see any Great Whites, just a plastic one in a museum), had a look around the museums, and even went to check out the famous Adelaide cricketground. It's supposed to be 'the most photogenic cricketground in the world' according to our lonely planet guide, so being tourists we couldn't miss out on that could we?

After Adelaide we left for 'The opalcapital of the world', Coober Pedy. Now this small town is smackbang in the middle of the outback in the Australian dessert... and it showed. It had a sort of western feel to it. Good fun. 2/3 of the town was actually built underground. Most of the miners there live in 'dugouts', which are basicly multiroom caves dug out by hand (the older one's) or using modern mining equipment. They had underground shops, underground churches, underground hotels, underground everything. We spent 2 nights in an underground hostel which was great fun. We took an afternoontour to get a look of the area. We passed a lot of opalminingfields (occasionaly tourists fall into miningshafts there trying to take a picture while walking backwards not looking where they are going... stupid, but true). We got the chance to do some 'noodling', which basicly is walking around an opal mining site and looking for bits of opal, what you find you can keep... I regret to say that I didn't exactly make a fortune... Thruthfully, I found not a single damn nugget... Luckely a nice Irish guy who'd been noodling a few hours that day with more succes than me offered me one of his finds which I gratefully accepted and claimed as my own :). We also got to see some spectacular landscape, most notably an area called 'The Breakaways', where curious rockformations have formed. Millions of years ago this area was covered by a massive inland sea, now since long dissapeared, the landscape a reminder of that ancient geological fact. Coober Pedy was also home to a large population of aboriginals, which made the town even more interesting.

Leaving Coober Pedy behind us, we took the greyhoundcoach to Alice Springs today. So that's where we are now. 800-something kilometers north of Coober Pedy and just about as central in Australia as you can get. We got a 3,5-day tour booked for tomorrow to go discover the magical centre of Australia, taking us to places like 'The Garden of Eden', 'Kings Canyon', 'Lost City' and ofcourse Ayer's Rock (or Uluru as the aboriginals call it), the huge red rock in the heart of Australia. Sounds great to me, I'll tell you guys all about it when we get back'

Bye bye

Survived The Overland :)

Helloooo. Yesterday evening the three of us arrived at our backpackers in Hobart, loathing for a hot shower and a good meal after succesfully completing The Overland Track. Up untill the start of our 7day walk the weather in Tassie had been beautiful, with almost nothing but sunny days. Our luck changed the day before we wanted to start The Overland. We went in to the information centre of the Lake St. Clair - Cradle Mountain National Park to register and pay the entry fee for the walk, when the ranger warned us about a serious coldfront coming in to the region a day later bringing wind, rain, hail and snow with it. He asked us if we were adequately prepared to do the walk in those conditions and didn't mind being cold and miserable. We answered something like : "Yeah, sure, No worries, we come from Belgium, we're used to that kind of weather, it'll make us feel at home" - not really knowing what to expect...

And the first day was BAAAAAAD. Trying to climb up a steep irregular path with strong gusts of wind battering in to your side is not a very pleasant sensation when you are carrying a 20+kg backpack. The weather that first day was so bad we thought about turning back the next day if the weather didn't settle down a bit. We arrived at the first hut completely soaked. Luckely we bought some xtra gear the day before we left, like thermal underwear (real lifesavers in that kind of weather), gloves and a hat (yes yes... this IS still Australia I'm talking about), so that we were ok... just very wet... We spent the rest of the day drying our stuff in front of the gas stove in the hut... and in the afternoon it started snowing... and snowing... and snowing...

The next day there was a nice thick blanket of snow (15 centimeters where we were)... and it was still snowing. The weather had settled down a bit though, so we decided to continue the walk... And we didn't regret that for a second during the rest of our trip. It was sooooo beautiful, we didn't mind spending hours every evening drying our clothes and boots in front of gas/coal stove. The snow gave the already marvelous landscape (think Lord of The Rings, but then smaller, and with rainforest) a mysterious aura, and the whole experience of being in the wilderness in the middle of nowhere was great. The snow had a downfall though... I had to give up my ascent of Mount Ossa about 20 minutes from the summit because the snow and mist had made the climb to dangerous... Getting down from where I was already proved to be quite a challenge. Climbing up I hadn't noticed how steep and slippery some parts actually were. I made it in the end, and did get some magnificent views, so it was certainly worth it... I'll just have to come back another time to get to the summit :)

We got to see some wildlife on our hike too. We often came across wallabies and pademelons (mini kangeroes that look like enormous rats when viewed from behind). They didn't seem to mind people very much. Some even let you get right up to them. Possums were all over the place at night, as usual, raiding any backpacks or tents that were left unattended. I particulary enjoyed the black cacatou. A marvelous bird that we sometimes spotted flying in between the trees in the rainforest.

After all of that nature stuff it's a bit of a shock to come back to a city like Hobart. But here we are. And tomorrow we fly out of Tasmania (*sob sob* There is still some much to see and do in this place... I could easily stay here for a few xtra weeks... but Australia is big, and we've still got a lot of ground to cover) and back to Melbourne. From there we will take the greyhound bus to Adelaide, capital of South Australia (Great White territory, annualy people get eaten there... not going for a swim there i think :) ), where we will stay a few days in preparation of our trip through the centre and up to the Northern Territory, home to the infamous australian salt water crocs... Looking forward to it already :)